As U.S. President Donald Trump escalates his global war on trade, Canada’s Liberals are getting a crash course in how vital the natural resources sector is to our economy.
Hot on the heels of the 50 per cent tax the Trump administration imposed on
imports last month, the president casually announced on Tuesday that he will be slapping an equivalent
by Aug. 1.
Canada exported $9.3 billion worth of copper and copper-based products in 2023, according to
, with more than half going to the United States. Although this doesn’t make us a global player in copper production (we rank 12th in the world), it’s not insignificant.
And although we’re sitting on an estimated 7.6-million tonnes of copper reserves, production has fallen precipitously since the Liberals took office — dropping to 508,250 tonnes in 2023, from a high of 697,322 tonnes in 2015 — even as global output has increased.
The new tariff will only serve to add to the economic pain caused by Trump’s levies on aluminum, a sector that is even more exposed to the American market. In 2023,
were valued at $16.9 billion, with over 90 per cent heading south of the border.
The anti-resource lobby, which holds an incredible amount of sway in this country, is surely doing a victory lap, holding out the tariffs, and the glut of domestic supply they will inevitably cause, as proof that the Liberals did the right thing by stifling the natural resources sector over the past 10 years.
If only the government had spent money to foster the knowledge economy …
Except that it did. The Grits put billions of dollars on the national credit card to fund innovation-investment and super-cluster programs, including pledging $15 billion to the
and $2 billion over 10 years for
.
And what did we get for it, aside from a huge debt burden that will plague future generations? Not much, according to business leaders who took part in a government roundtable on innovation a few years ago.
As
in the Globe and Mail noted, numerous industry leaders who were invited to participate in the event complained that many of the government’s decisions were politically motivated and its programs lacked clear objectives, were overly broad and were designed by bureaucrats who had little idea what they were doing.
Take, for example, the Canada Growth Fund. It was intended to “keep Canada competitive on the global stage and to ensure it continues to be a leading destination for investment.” But not just any investment. Oh no, we can’t have that!
It specifically targets projects that will put Canada “on the path to emissions reductions,” so we can meet a series of “national economic and environmental goals” — all part of the Liberals’ grand plan to transition us into a “green economy.” And how well did that go?
Despite the massive public investments that fell from the Trudeau money tree over the past decade, Canada’s per capita GDP growth lagged well behind the OCED average in every year between 2015 and 2024, according to
, while the
show that GHG emissions declined by a measly 6.6 per cent between 2015 and 2023.
Not exactly bang for your buck.
It’s true that some countries have successfully transformed their economies. Israel, for example, went from being a relatively poor country to the high-tech “Start-up Nation” it is today in a fairly short period of time. Some of that turnaround was achieved through government interventions led by the
.
But its work was complemented by
in the 1970s and ’80s, a 50-year process of
that was completed around the turn of the century and
in the early 2000s that fostered the country’s entrepreneurial spirit and unleashed the potential of the free market.
Until
, Canada had not made a concerted effort to reduce red tape since the Harper government appointed Maxime Bernier to chair the Red Tape Reduction Commission
.
Quite the opposite, in fact. The Trudeau government only added to Canada’s regulatory burden, including by designing an
that’s so onerous, it makes it virtually impossible to build a shed in a national park without submitting an encyclopedia’s worth of reports on how the project might affect transgender frog populations.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, former prime minister Justin Trudeau turned away not
, but
world
who journeyed to Canada, practically begging us to sell them liquefied natural gas.
There wasn’t a “business case,” you see, even though there were eager buyers and willing sellers, which is the textbook definition of a “business case.”
At the very least, Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to recognize the folly of electing a celebrity who cared more about courting his fanboys in the international press with tokenistic left-wing policies than furthering Canada’s national interests.
Carney’s
to fast-track infrastructure and natural resource projects, which received royal assent late last month, is a step in the right direction, and a clear acknowledgement that many of the processes implemented by his predecessor make it next to impossible to get anything done.
But in typical Liberal fashion, the recently passed Building Canada Act gives the mandarins in Ottawa the power to
the winners and losers. Projects that the Liberals deem to be in the “national interest” will receive favourable regulatory treatment. Those that don’t? Well, good luck getting past the Impact Assessment Act.
The truth is that if innovation could be centrally planned and dictated from the top down, Canada would be one of the most innovative countries on earth. And if private enterprise could successfully be co-opted to further the goals of the state, we’d all be driving around in Fiats and Volkswagens.
As long as resource projects and other business ventures are backed by private funds, are consented to by landowners and take reasonable steps not to harm human health and the natural environment, they should be allowed to proceed.
Some of them will surely fail, just as countless computer hobbyists in the 1970s never managed to build Fortune 500 companies out of their garages. But every once in a while, a Steve Jobs and a Steve Wozniak will come along and start the next Apple Computer. Or a company will take a risk and turn northern Alberta’s tar pits into gold mines.
What Canada needs, if we are to survive Trump’s upending of the liberal trading regime and thrive in a very uncertain future, is a free-market revolution that would see governments get out of the way so that businesses and entrepreneurs can do what they do best.
This is especially true when it comes to natural resources. Like it or not, Canadians have always been “hewers of wood and drawers of water” — and no government program is going to change that any time soon.
National Post
jkline@postmedia.com
